Adolescents' conscious processes of developing regulation: learning to appraise challenges

To understand regulation and agency, it important to consider the nature of the regulatory challenges that adolescents must deal with. These include emotional, motivation, interpersonal, and other obstacles and problems. In this chapter, the author discusses the challenges reported by youth working on arts, technology, and social justice projects in organized programs and how they learn to address them. Adolescents' new higher-order cognitive capacities allow them to better understand the irregularities and complexity of real-world challenges. They also use these capacities to consciously develop skills to navigate these challenges.